Sexual Abuse Of Boys Rocked Family's Core

Friend Had Strange Power Over Sons

April 17, 1989|By RON SHAWGO Staff Writer

HAMPTON — Thirteen-year-old Steven sat at the kitchen table with a knife pressed to his throat. His mother and her best friend watched in shock.

The friend, Vera Willett, wrestled the blade away from the boy as he chanted, "I want to kill myself. I want to kill myself." Steven's mother, Sara, then subdued him until an ambulance arrived to take the boy away for evaluation.

Minutes earlier, when Sara was alone with her son, he confessed to stealing items from his older brother's bedroom at Willett's request. When she asked why, Steven became upset.

"If I tell you I will have to kill you, Vera and myself," he replied.

That puzzling response and resulting suicide attempt in October were among the crucial pieces that Sara and her husband, Peter, had been slowly putting together since the summer, when her family began to disintegrate to the point that she believed Willett had control over Steven and his 16-year-old brother, Tom.

When finally put together a short time later, Peter and Sara say, the puzzle portrayed the 32-year-old Willett as a child molester who allegedly coerced Tom into a three-month sexual relationship, led Steven to attempt suicide and put the boys' family into intensive psychological counseling.

In a statement to a Hampton police detective, Willett admitted having sex with Tom three or four times but denied she coerced him, according to court records. She told Cpl. Jon Decker that marital problems drove her to the relationship with the boy.

For her sexual contact with Tom from June to August, Willett was found guilty in Hampton and York County juvenile courts of contributing to the delinquency of a minor. She received 30-day suspended sentences in both jurisdictions. After pleading guilty in York on Friday, she also was ordered to undergo a psychiatric evaluation. Her counselor is to report to the court every six months on her progress.

On Tuesday, Willett was found not guilty in Hampton of fondling 13-year-old Steven twice when he stayed overnight in her house in May and July. On the witness stand, Willett denied that she was guilty of two counts of aggrevated sexual battery for the alleged fondling episodes. Other witnesses said Steven could not have been in the room of the house in which he said the offenses occurred because it was still under construction.

In ruling on the case, Circuit Judge Walter J. Ford said he had a "very stong feeling that something did happen" to Steven, but could not convict Willett on his suspicions.

Willett declined to be interviewed for this story.

Sara and her husband, Peter, have a third son, 10-year-old Johnnie. The couple and their children recently told a reporter their story on condition that their real names not be used.

The family lives in a quiet city neighborhood consisting of two-story homes with late-model cars parked outside. Willett, her husband and their three children live a few blocks away.

Sara said she met Willett at a home interior decoration demonstration that Willett led in March 1987. They found they had similar interests and soon brought their families together for picnics, trips to Busch Gardens, birthdays and holidays.

"It was really nice to get along with someone who thought of me as her sister," Sara said. "We spent so much time together we were really one."

Sixteen-year-old Tom started baby-sitting the Willetts' children in the fall of 1987. The families occasionally allowed their children to stay overnight with each other. Sara said that at the start of school last year, Vera began driving Steven to and from school every day.

Tom testified in Hampton Juvenile and Domestic Relations Court in January that Willett first had sex with him June 17, when Sara had left her children in Willett's care so she could go to the Virgin Islands and spend four days with her husband, who is in the Navy. Tom said the sexual encounter came when Willett threated not to take the children to Busch Gardens and other places if he refused.

When Sara returned from her trip, she said she found the atmosphere had changed, but didn't know why.

"Vera had become very motherly," she said. "She was very in charge of my children."

Tom said he told Willett that they had to end their relationship but the woman responded by threatening to kill herself. He later told a Hampton judge that the threat worked and they continued having sexual relations.

Though their trysts remained a secret, there were outward signs of the relationship that began to make Peter and Sara wonder if something was wrong. They say they noticed a strange interaction between Tom and Willett during a July 4 party at the Willetts' home, but still didn't know what it meant.

"If he got something to eat, she'd get something to eat. If he went into the pool, she'd go into the pool," Peter said. "My brother even brought it up: `What's going on here? What's wrong?'"